The Dawn Before the Dark
by meldahlie
Summary: At the start of the Hundred Years Winter, two friends consider the fate of Narnia.


The Dawn Before the Dark

At the start of the Hundred Years Winter, two friends consider the fate of Narnia

~:~:~:~

On the western hills of Narnia, where the Wood of the Lantern had been, the wind blew coldly. The tents of the army of King Gale were covered in a thick layer of snow. In the thin grey light before dawn, a sentry paced, peering out across the rumpled snow beyond the camp. All was white now, the bumps and hollows hiding the burned and ruined trees, and the burned and ruined bodies of the men who lay among them.

The sentry shivered. Well might this place be called Lantern Waste now. When Narnia had been least suspecting, peaceful and contented, the enemy had come from the North. Terrible men, terrible beasts, and a commander whose power was greater than any mortal enemy Narnia had ever met had swooped down on the token guard around the Tree of Safety, and razed it to the ground. Fear had come to Narnia, and with it Winter. The first army the King had sent lay dead beneath the snow. Now the King himself had brought the second. The last army of Narnia, some called it.

In the last tent in the row, one of the occupants lifted his head slightly from sitting huddled over the fire, and listened to the slow footsteps passing in the snow. "We still have a sentry, then." The highest losses so far had been of those on sentry duty, the isolation providing ideal opportunities for the wargs and werewolves to pick them off.

His companion, lying on the low camp-bed, did not speak but nodded. For a moment, Lord Ettin of Ettinsmore and Lord Peredan of the Southern March looked into each other's eyes. Their titles were among the oldest in Narnia, carrying the honour and chivalry of a thousand years in service to the Narnian crown, and resting somewhat incongruously on the two boys who bore them. Lord Ettin, more commonly known as Froggie due to his long limbs, was twenty; Lord Peredan his cousin was nineteen. Their fathers were among the commanders who lay dead beneath the snow.

The wind moaned through the tents again. Peredan shuddered down beneath the covers, and then peered through the dim firelight at his cousin. "Have you been out?"

Froggie shook his head. "Witness the lack of icicles! I just – seem to have sat up. All night."

Again the two boys looked at each other. It had been at mess yesterday evening that the scouting party – what remained of the scouting party – had come in, their report a vast army beyond the low swelling rise of moorland to the north. Unless the Witch Queen had for her own reasons seen fit to draw off in the night, battle was ordered for today. Froggie shrugged slightly, reached down for the scabbard at his feet, and drew his sword. It balanced well in his hand, bright and trim as only a dwarf-forged blade could be, but it was new. Like its bearer, it knew nothing of battle.

"Why!?" Peredan burst out suddenly, rising onto one elbow in his passionate exclamation. "Why!? Six months ago, you and I were Court Pages at Cair Paravel! The defence of the Tree, the guarding of the Western Wild – none of those were our responsibility! So why!? The failures were not ours! Why do we have to come here and die for them?! Why?! Why?!"

His last, hoarse with anguish query died away into the snow-muffled silence. For a minute, Froggie did not answer but sat, tipping his sword to and fro and watching the red firelight run along the blade. Then he sheathed it as suddenly as Peredan's outburst had come, and looked up.

"The Calormenes would say 'It is the will of Tash,'" he said, in a soft, impassionate voice. "The young, the old, the innocent, the guilty; all perish. 'It is the will of Tash.'"

Silence again. Peredan stared at his un-moving cousin, and then sat up on the camp-bed. "Froggie?"

"But that is falsehood!" Froggie's voice snapped into fierce intensity. "Lies to lull men into the darkness! Lies, lies! Give me one day of pain above a thousand lulled in darkness!" His hands shook on the scabbard, and he flung it down to seize Peredan's hands across the fire.

"Cousin of mine, we are here because there is truth! Because there is more than a demonic, devouring god; because justice is bigger than this world; because there is evil and a power greater than it! Evil has come against us, because it is evil. But it has found power because we were slack, because the Court idled while the Tree stood scarcely guarded. We called on the name of the Lion, and the Emperor over the sea, but we did not heed his warnings. Yes, you will say, but Narnia has repented in blood and tears."

Froggie stood up, his head almost touching the frozen canvas roof. "And it is good, that Narnia has repented. It will save us. Not from the Witch, not from the dire fates the Lion warned of if Narnia ever forgot to guard her Tree. But with justice bigger than this world, it will save us!"

He crouched down by the fire again, and held out his hands to the feeble warmth. "Do you remember?" he asked softly. "Do you remember what the nurses and the tutors used to say? That on the day the world was made, we were promised a thousand years of peace? And what would come after that, the Lion would take the worst of it upon himself? Perry, we shall die; die in a cause that is right, for a fault not wholly our own. But there is more than this world. The books are balanced across all worlds. Somehow, the Lion will save Narnia though we lose, and save us though we die."

And as suddenly as he had begun, Lord Ettin of Ettinsmore broke off into the boy Froggie's laugh. "I know not how, I know not how! But I know we will die, and I know we will live!" He reached out and hauled his cousin to his feet. "Come, Perry! It is our last morning and the dawn is here!"

He sprang to the door with a bound of the long limbs that had earned him his nickname, and flung back the flap. Peredan squeezed out after him, as Lord Ettin of Ettinsmore drew his sword with a flourish, and the drawn blade flashed red in the bitter light of the winter sunrise.

"Be of good heart, my brother in arms! We will break fast at the king's table, we will die at the hands of the witch queen, but there is no doubt and great glory that we shall sup at the Emperor's table beyond the sea tonight!"

~:~:~:~


End file.
